Monday, June 26, 2017

As most of us know, that strange subculture called "UFOlogy" has its own peculiar madness concerning a belief called "Disclosure": the belief that governments (especially the U.S. government) have long secretly known about extraterrestrials - perhaps have even been communicating or cooperating with aliens - but have kept it top secret. And that supposed "secrecy" is about to end. This is the equivalent in the UFO religion (for that's what it is to many people) of the "Second Coming" of Jesus in the Christian religion: a joyous event eagerly anticipated for over two thousand years, but hasn't happened yet.

The latest instance of Disclosure Mania purports to come from the hacker group Anonymous, best known for its attacks on Scientology. It is a mishmash of irrelevant quotes from NASA having nothing to do with discovery of ETs, hoax UFO photos, and general stupidity of the highest order. Watch it, and weep.

there’s just one small problem: NASA wasn’t hacked, and Anonymous Global isn’t Anonymous.

That’s right. This breaking news flash, urgently recycled and regurgitated throughout many respected realms of cyberspace, is based entirely on a bogus claim from an opportunistic Youtuber that has shamelessly commercialized the likeness of Anonymous – the true heroes of hacktivism.

But what’s even worse is that no one even seemed to notice.

In fact, everything that Anonymous Global “reveals” is actually based on public information. That is to say, the extent of this supposed ‘NASA hack’ is limited to openly accessible, non-classified data that anyone can find simply by browsing the web.

Robert Bigelow: There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence. And I spent millions and millions and millions -- I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.

Lara Logan: Is it risky for you to say in public that you believe in UFOs and aliens?

Robert Bigelow: I don't give a damn. I don't care.

Lara Logan: You don't worry that some people will say, "Did you hear that guy, he sounds like he's crazy"?

Robert Bigelow: I don't care.

Lara Logan: Why not?

Robert Bigelow: It's not gonna make a difference. It's not gonna change reality of what I know.

Lara Logan: Do you imagine that in our space travels we will encounter other forms of intelligent life?

Robert Bigelow: You don't have to go anywhere.

Lara Logan: You can find it here? Where exactly?

Robert Bigelow: It's just like right under people's noses. Oh my gosh. Wow.

Many UFO proponents found great significance in this. Coast to Coast radio said, "The tantalizing exchange and the serious nature with which it was presented was remarkable for a primetime program on national television, especially the venerable 60 Minutes." But Bigelow was simply re-stating his well-known personal beliefs about UFOs, said nothing new, and presented no evidence of any kind.

“Before the year is out, the Government perhaps the President—is expected to make what are described as 'unsettling disclosures' about UFOs” - U.S. News & World Report, April 18, 1977.

“Aliens... will begin trans­mitting their secrets to us no later than August, 1977” - Jeane Dixon, 1976.

“We predict that by 1975 the government will release definite proof that extraterrestrials are watching us.” - Ralph and Judy Blum, in Beyond Earth: Man's Contact with UFOs (1974).

“The time is getting near when the U.S. Air Force will have to end its longstanding tactic of concealment.” - Syndicated columnist Roscoe Drum­mond, 1974.

“FLYING SAUCERS—THE REAL STORY: U.S. BUILT FIRST ONE IN 1942. Jet-propelled disks can outfly other planes ... By choosing which [jet] noz­zles to turn on or off and the angle of tilt, the pilot could make the saucer rise or descend vertically, hover, or fly straight ahead, or make sharp turns… a big advance in the science of flying... No official announcements are being made yet, but about the only big secret left is "who makes them." Evidence points to Navy experiments... ” - News “scoop” in U.S. News & World Report, April 7, 1950.

Monday, June 19, 2017

Every so often, a cry goes out from some well-known UFOlogist about the lack of "progress" in UFOlogy. The cry is often echoed by others, typically with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Solutions are proposed, but ultimately nothing changes.

Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos

As those of you who follow the UFO Blogs and postings already know, the most recent cry of this kind comes from the Spanish UFOlogist Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos. Olmos has been researching UFOs for fifty years now, and since the year 2000 has been concentrating his efforts on FOTOCAT, a world-wide catalog of UFO photo events. Many researchers have assisted with this collection, myself included. Olmos is well-respected among UFO Realists (those who attempt to adhere to facts (more or less) in investigating UFOs, as opposed to the Unrealists who are always ready to believe exciting UFO stories with little or no proof). In Jacques Vallee's autobiographical Forbidden Science (Volume 2), he mentions in an entry for 1970 that he has been corresponding regularly with Olmos concerning reported Spanish landing cases. In fact, Vallee mentions Olmos several times in that volume. You won't find anyone with better UFO street cred than that.

In his Blog posting of June 9, Olmos wrote,

Case after case, when duly documented and analyzed, is demolished or downgraded. Every day that goes by, we hear of another classic UFO case long considered uncanny and insoluble, now probed and found to have an ordinary, conventional cause.... Advanced imaging systems aboard military aircraft are available today in such numbers that one could expect that UFO images would be recorded frequently, if UFOs appeared in the atmosphere with the regularity some reports suggest. The bare truth is that the evidence of anything exceptional or singular recorded with such powerful means is extremely poor or non-existent...

Ufology not only fails to advance, it is a vicious circle. Today we see UFO news publicized on the internet with the same old images of lens flares or aircraft contrails that seemed strange in the 1950s. Because there are no academic or authoritative criteria universally accepted, and no hard evidence that exists as a certainty, past mistakes recur over and over. Ufology is immersed in a loop that never ends

His posting is long and very thoughtful, and painfully honest. I recommend that you read it very carefully, in its entirely. Olmos concludes:

Let me be perfectly clear: the UFO phenomenon holds transcendent
significance only insofar as it results from extraterrestrial life
visiting the Earth. It is this possibility that made the ETT popular and
compelling from the start. But I fear that 70 years of air incidents,
close encounters, radar returns, photos and videos and other seemingly
astonishing experiences do not sum up to proof that such visits have
taken place.

This conclusion, coming from a man who has been at the forefront of UFO research for fifty years, is devastating. He follows it up with a piece by his colleague Thomas E. "Eddie" Bullard, professor emeritus of folklore at the University of Indiana. Frankly, this piece surprised me at least a little. I have met Bullard several times at different UFO conferences (I have corresponded with Olmos, but never met him), and came away with the impression of Bullard as a True Believer in the UFO Abduction Phenomenon, as taught by Hopkins-Jacobs-Mack: we have done the studies, we have the evidence, alien abductions are established fact. He participated in the Encounters at Indian Head conference ("Betty Hill's Last Hurrah") in 2000, where he suggested that the Hills' close encounter and abduction narrative were probably based on real events.

Eddie Bullard (left) and the late Hilary Evans chat with the late Betty Hill in 2000. On the right is "junior," Betty's supposed UFO abductor, as sculpted by Marjorie Fish.

1. Capture. The abductee is forcibly taken from terrestrial surroundings to an apparent alien space craft.
2. Examination. Invasive medical or scientific procedures are performed on the abductee.
3. Conference. The abductors speak to the abductee.
4. Tour. The abductees are given a tour of their captors' vessel.
5. Loss of Time. Abductees rapidly forget the majority of their experience.
6. Return. The abductees are returned to earth. Occasionally in a different location from where they were allegedly taken or with new injuries or disheveled clothing.
7. Theophany. The abductee has a profound mystical experience, accompanied by a feeling of oneness with God or the universe.
8. Aftermath. The abductee must cope with the psychological, physical, and social effects of the experience.

UFOlogy cannot become a science, because it has no real data that it can study. Of course there are accounts from "reliable witnesses," but it has become increasingly evident in recent years that "reliable witnesses" often aren't. So there is nothing truly solid on which to base any theories about a supposed UFO phenomenon, separate and distinct from other known phenomena. Given the inherent fallibility of human eyewitness testimony, the real question should be: how often should we expect to find seemingly credible and extraordinary UFO accounts, even in the absence of any extraordinary stimulus? UFOlogists assume that the answer is "zero," which is obviously wrong.

Many critics maintain that all UFO reports are garbage. Since a large portion of the original, unfiltered reports are clearly the result of misperception, critics say that investigation in depth would reveal that the entire body of UFO phenomena can be so characterized. Such arguments assume that all UFO reports belong to the same statistical population and that the deviants, the truly interesting UFO reports, are merely extremes in that population. One might with equal justice say while plotting the variation in sizes of oranges that watermelons are merely the tail end of the distribution curve of the sizes of oranges. (Footnote, The UFO Experience, p. 27)

One might indeed say that when one does not know whether watermelons are a distinct category from the oranges, and thus cannot exclude the possibility that they are measurement errors of oranges.

What Olmos is saying is that the traditional approach to serious UFO research - what might be called the Hynekian paradigm - investigating reports from credible individuals, investigating alleged physical effects, photos, and videos - has reached a complete dead end. And nobody (thus far) has mounted a vigorous defense to try to prove him wrong.

But this grudging admission will have no effect whatsoever on what is sometimes called "Retail UFOlogy," the large number of Unrealist consumers of UFO materials and those who pander to them for fun and profit. Most of those people probably have no idea who Olmos or Bullard are. Instead they eagerly devour high-octane UFO and alien stories from the likes of Steven Greer, David Wilcock, George Noory, etc., and find them highly interesting.

Philip J. Klass

In our discussion of the lack of "progress" in UFOlogy, it is appropriate to close with a look at Phil Klass' UFO Curse. In a moment of great benificence, the late super-skeptic Philip J. Klass bequeathed

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS
To ufologists who publicly criticize me, ... or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath:

THE UFO CURSE:
No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.

Another way of looking at Olmos and others' admissions of UFOlogical defeat is that they have run into, and recognized, the fundamental limits to our UFO knowledge set by Klass' UFO Curse.

Followers

About Me

Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy and the question of life on other worlds. He is one of the leading skeptical investigators of UFOs, a founding member of the UFO Subcommittee of the well-known Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP). He is also a founding director and past Chairman of the Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics' group in the San Francisco Bay area .
Mr. Sheaffer has written the "Psychic Vibrations" column in The Skeptical Inquirer for over 30 years, and his book "Psychic Vibrations" reprints some of those columns. He is also the author of "UFO Sightings" (Prometheus Books, 1998), and has appeared on many radio and TV programs. His writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and others.
Mr. Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California. He has worked as a data communications engineer in the Silicon Valley, and sings in professional opera productions.